Request Network – Speculative Handbook

*Bookmark this page; we will be updating it regularly with a roundup of Request.network related news (Hype and FUD); as well as any details of exchange listing.

Disclaimer: Speculator here; I am time-poor and only look closely at and write about projects i believe in, have invested in or plan on investing in. Information below aims to be impartial; however it is not investment advice. Do your due diligence. Crypto is a wild and turbulent environment. Good luck in the vols to come.

14Dec: Community Growth Update

Since the last time we took a look at community growth metrics, Request has experienced a dramatic rise in both price and investor engagement. Let’s take a look at how things are progressing.

Social Channel Comparison

As of December 14 2017:

Token Sale Date

Days Since Token Sale

Reddit Subs Today

Growth since 5th Nov

FB Followers

Growth since 5th Nov

Twitter

Growth since 5th Nov

Request

13Oct17

61

8,651

389%

1,526

114%

10,030

96%

OMG

27Jun17

169

21,963

21%

6,809

16%

117,141

40%

Kyber

15Sep17

89

3,436

20%

432

33%

30,816

34%

Chainlink

19Sep17

85

4,704

29%

6,618

28%

Airswap

10Oct17

64

748

40%

2,267

9%

7,487

40%

Omise GO vs Request Network Growth on Reddit

We’ve written previously about the comparisons between Request and OmiseGO; the Request team has blogged comparing the two and we recall early hype for the project penning it as “the OMG of the West”. While we firmly believe the two projects are quite different and that they can coexist; nevertheless the comparisons have been relentless, the popular line of thinking is that if Request gains traction it should close the ground on OmiseGO which is currently valued at >1.1billion USD (REQ is currently valued at ~160million USD).

Request community engagement is growing dramatically and the trend looks set to continue as the REQ project continues to frequent the most popular crypto communication channels. We see the rapid growth of the community and the introduction of new investors as positive for near term price action.

7Dec: Not just Paypal 2.0 | A Financial Platform for Blockchain

Request Network – A Financial PlatformRequest Network has been dubbed “PayPal 2.0” by some commentators and while Request can work as a payment platform akin to PayPal, many do not realise that the Request Network is much more.

“Request is not an app but a financial platform on which many projects can be developed. … We want to structure cryptocurrency payments, finance and accounting areas. Our goal is to build a platform to operate payment requests applicable for every financial flow, and structure it by allowing external systems and software to plug into the platform through the use of our APIs.” – Request Team – November 24 Update.

The Request Network envisions itself as a Financial Platform; a protocol agnostic financial layeron top of Blockchain technology. Request’s financial platform focuses on providing the infrastructure that will become the “standard for invoices, accounting, auditing, and payments in cryptocurrencies and fiat assets.” (Request Team – November 24 Update). Request plans to deliver on this vision by leveraging blockchain technologies (e.g. Kyber Partnership which we covered previously) and ensuring that they remain platform and currency agnostic, so as to reach the widest possible audience.

What is the Financial Platform Request envisions? For this we need to take a look at the Tech Mind Map that the team released with their November 24 update. The Request mind map is split into branches, of which the below 3 are key to actualise their platform.

Philosophy and Vision – The team aims to base their work and decisions in their stated core philosophies. Decentralised; Open sourced; Secure.

Use Cases – the use cases can be thought of as implementations that leverage the core protocol functions to provide and facilitate services. Some of the use cases include: standard requests, online payments, accounting, financial audit, P2P and Point of Sale.

Many of the endpoints on Request’s Tech Mind Map are ambitious projects in themselves. the realisation of Protocol endpoints seem to add greater functionality to Request Network infrastructure, while Use Case endpoints are the user facing implementations that grow the Request ecosystem. This is where Request’s strength could really shine, in its ability to build a diverse and robust financial platform that provides the tools and infrastructure for devs to deploy the financial applications and services they envision (or to integrate Request with existing applications).
__________________________

Example Use Case | AccountingLets take a look at the impact that Request Network could have on just one of its major use cases, accounting. Request could revolutionise accounting by allowing users to settle transactions over the Request Network. To understand how, let’s dive into the landscape:The Old WorldDouble Entry Accounting – Gives Bookkeepers Faith in their own Books but external auditing is required to gain the confidence of third parties.The current financial industry is underpinned by Double Entry Accounting. Double entry accounting is a system in which each entry into a ledger has an equal and opposite entry in a different account; in other words each debit has a corresponding credit. Where the debits in a ledger do not equal credits we know that there has been some error or fraud. Double entry accounting revolutionised financial accounting as it gave book-keepers confidence in the contents of their own books. However to gain the confidence of third parties, the work of external auditors is still necessary. This is very expensive and time consuming.

The New WorldTriple Entry Accounting via blockchain technology – All accounting entries involving outside parties are cryptographically verified by a third entry on a common ledger. Dramatically reducing the need for external audit but difficult to implement in the absence of accepted norms or standards for the “third entry”.Blockchain brings with it the advent of triple entry accounting, transactions between disparate parties can be recorded in an immutable manner on a distributed common ledger; dramatically reducing the role of external audit (which may still be needed for internal controls). The transaction details are agreed by both parties and cryptographically stored on the blockchain, so now third parties (shareholders, investors etc.) should be able to verify accounts just by checking entries in a private ledger for consistency with the corresponding “third entry” on a distributed ledger.

HOWEVER there is no standardised or uniform infrastructure that disparate companies/individuals can utilise for their immutable “third entry” records. While two parties could certainly store their transaction details on existing blockchain infrastructure using bespoke methodology (which will likely be an additional manual step after the transaction takes place), the lack of common standards across industry would still make it difficult for outside parties to verify the “third entry” records with any ease.The Request SolutionRequest Network – A protocol agnostic financial layer designed to convert a (theoretically) infinite range of transactions into immutable accounting records that are easy to verify because they use a standardised infrastructure . The promised land of triple entry accounting.Request creates a standardised infrastructure that disparate parties can utilise not only to settle transactions but to simultaneously create immutable accounting records in the form of a receipt or “third entry” that is stored on a distributed ledger. The transaction automatically creates the third entry (there is no manual entry step); furthermore this “third entry” remains easy to verify because it utilises a predictable set of standards. Not only does the Request layer enable currency agnostic transactions at lower cost than centralised iterations it could conceivably revolutionise the accounting process in that very same step.

“Thanks to the interoperability, immutability and decentralized nature of the Blockchain, we’ll see the emergence of the triple-entry accounting system (the invoice becomes the transaction) and the time stamping system (basic blockchain function that permanently registers on the block the time that a particular action took place).” – Excerpt from Request Yellow Paper.

Implications for Accounting
We’ve looked at just one aspect of what the Request platform can do and yet the breadth of the project starts to become evident. By creating the infrastructure and backend needed for individuals and companies to implement triple entry accounting (just one of its use cases); Request opens up the possibility of migrating towards a fully “smart audit”. The Request Network intends to tackle all aspects of a “smart audit” by achieving simplicity (automation), immutability (common database), accuracy, authenticity (a decrease in human errors), traceability of invoices and payments (reconciliation); a triple-entry system.

“From turnover to wages and taxes, a financial audit will go through all the transactions of a company. We categorize an audit today into several sections: equity, assets, banks, customers, Income, suppliers, charges, salaries, taxes, intercompanies, financial charges and income.” – Excerpt from Request Yellow Paper.

This is by no means an easy task, If we take a step outside crypto for a second and look at the behemoth that is the financial accounting industry it is easy to see that an overhaul of accounting processes will be an uphill battle. We should not underestimate the power and monopoly that existing accounting philosophies, enterprise software companies and regulators have. Changing the established “way of doing things” will need to be a grassroots effort (Development of new applications, plugins to existing applications, etc.) underpinned by a solid working product and realised eventually through mass adoption. With the financial accounting industry becoming more aware of blockchain technology and how it can benefit from “triple entry accounting” / “Real time accounting” (Source), Request is in a prime position to be one of the leaders in the field. Like all disrupters, Request will face many challenges but with a solid team and platform the Request Network is giving itself a great shot at success.

The update to the Request Core is promising. We see the team ramping up community/developer engagement through the incentive program as we approach Colossus release.

This post will focus on Request’s partnership with Kyber and what it means to the Network as a whole. We will also look at how the partnership is the right step towards the realisation of the Technical Mind Map.

What is the partnership with Kyber? and what does it mean for Request?

The request team describes in their update that Kyber will help with “The cross currency automated settlement system”. It is one of two solutions thus far that allows request to remain agnostic to the payment method elected by the user (0x Project being the other); it converts the cryptocurrency the payer wants to pay in into the cryptocurrency the requestor wants to receive in. It will also assist with the request “Fee System”. The important question for investors is “How does this partnership benefit the Request Network?” and “What type of progression does it provide towards the realisation of the request team’s stated aims?”

The diagram below illustrates an example use of Kyber by a Gateway, remembering as per our FAQ below, that a gateway is the middleman API/GUI between a requestor and a payer, be it the Request app on your phone, or a payment API on e-commerce marketplace.

The diagram above illustrates simply that the partnership with Kyber allows the Request Network to never require the Requestor or the Payer to hold any Request tokens or participate in manual cryptocurrency conversions, as this is all automated by the Request Contract. This is very important as Request’s focus has always been to ensure that they are expanding on their ability to reach the widest possible userbase. Eliminating the requirement to ever hold Request tokens for both the Requestor and the Payer, the Request Network becomes more accessible.

It is then surprising to us that some in the community raised concerns to us that the partnership made the Request token redundant. We will re-iterate that Request Tokens are always required to be burned, for each and every transaction ensuring that the transaction is recorded in an immutable ledger.

In fact, there is an argument for gateways storing their own Request Tokens as a supply to be burned. Why? Because it will prove cheaper in the long run. If the Request Gateway does not store its own Request Tokens to burn it will always be required to buy Request Tokens at market value. As there is a decreasing supply of Request tokens as more transactions occur, a gateway will have a large incentive to lock up a large number of tokens that the Gateway can utilise. This will give them a competitive edge over other Gateways whom buy at market value, by lowering the fees charged to the requestor.

Whilst this is beneficial to those who can afford it, the accessibility afforded to Gateways and customers by not having to hold tokens is what the Request team has aimed to achieve. This allows even a new start up, or a personalised e-commerce webpage or even a small company wanting to use Request Network for their accounting purposes to come on board.

The Request Network has set itself up to maintain a healthy network and appreciation of value for its token, with lock up of tokens proving to be more economical and a forever decreasing supply for an increasing demand not limited by an inaccessible network.

What is the Tech Mind Map? How is it related to the Kyber Partnership?

The Tech Mind Map is a diagram describing everything that the Request Network wants to achieve. This Tech Mind Map is the first real view of the true potentials that the Request Team seeks to achieve. I will not go into detail here but will mention there have been questions in the community about refunds/ reversals/ chargeback, Escrows etc., all of which the Request Team intends to tackle as they go about creating the Financial Platform of the future.

That is right, a Financial Platform. The comparisons to Paypal seem unjustified for the ambition of the project itself.

“Request is not an app but a financial platform on which many projects can be developed. It is a layer on top of Ethereum simplifying the development of many features in the crypto finance space. We want to structure cryptocurrency payments, finance and accounting areas. Our goal is to build a platform to operate payment requests applicable for every financial flow, and structure it by allowing external systems and software to plug into the platform through the use of our APIs. Thanks to a decentralized payment request, we can recreate all the platforms existing in the FIAT world and apply financial features in the crypto world such as invoicing, salaries, payments and many others.” – Request Team

The partnership with Kyber is a great example of how the team intends to deliver all these ambitions. They emphasise that each outcome on the Tech Mind Map is a project in itself. With such a heavy task in front of them, their ability to be ready and willing to leverage technologies of other blockchains to achieve the best outcome possible is what differentiates them from most blockchain technologies out now. They focus their expertise on the Tech Mind Map and creating a financial platform whilst relying on experts in other fields to secure their network and continually update and improve on it.

In closing, the Kyber partnership is a critical step along the path to widest userbase. There is still so much more to do to achieve Request’s ambitions, but their willingness to leverage other technologies to achieve their vision is reassuring. The potentials of how different blockchain technologies will come together to create a Financial Platform that can serve the world now and in the future, will be an interesting road to follow.

8Nov: Request Network FAQs Answered

Etienne Tatur (Co-founder & CTO at Request Network) and Adm (a developer working closely with REQ community and developers) have reviewed the below FAQs and provided comments.

NOTE: This is not the official FAQ by the Request Team and the community can look forward to further FAQs being answered this coming announcement on Friday 10 November from the Request Network team.

How do transactions work on the Request Network? | Are REQ tokens burned as a fee for transactions?

Transactions can occur directly on the network however in practice most transactions would be done via the Request APIs – Gateways. The gateways enable the layman to interact and transact with the Request network easily without needing to understand what is under the hood. The gateways also allow Request to be currency and chain agnostic and ensures the success of the Request Network roll-out to the non-crypto world.

To complete each transaction there is a set fee levied by the Request Network from the Gateways in the form of token burn. To ensure that the transactions are always verified a Gateway must have a continuous and replenishing supply of REQ tokens. An increase in transactions on the network concurrent with a decrease in the supply of available tokens will mean an appreciation to the value of each REQ token. Note that the set fee decreases inversely to the tokens value appreciation as the network evolves and is more frequently used, thus always maintaining their competitive low fees.

How does Request use the token burn mechanism? | How does it benefit a Request token holder?

The burning mechanism is a very exciting feature of Request Network. Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, wrote a blog post that highlights the benefits of the burning mechanism – On Medium-of-Exchange Token Valuations. He concludes that for a token to have stable value over time “it is highly beneficial for the token supply to have sinks (sic burn) – places where tokens actually disappear and so the total token quantity decreases over time”.

The Request Network requires the burning of tokens as part of the verification that a transaction has occurred. The burned tokens are removed from the circulating supply altogether. This decreases the overall supply of available Request tokens over time. Concurrently, the demand for tokens will increase over time as the number of transactions on the network increases.

The increase in demand for tokens to complete transactions at the same time as the decrease in token supply due to “burning” results emphatically in the increase in token value. The increase in value of the tokens will also allow the set fee for transactions to be reduced over time allowing the network to maintain its low-fee competitive edge.

The more the network is used the more value it produces to its token holders. As a result, holding REQ tokens makes it a lucrative investment if it achieves network effect.

Can anyone use the Request Network? | Will they need tokens to use the Request Network?

Short answer: Yes, anyone can use the Request Network and they don’t need request tokens to use it. In practice all interactions with the Request Network will happen through the APIs. “Gateways” will then be created using the APIs which will act as a middleman between the sender and receiver. In turn this abstracts the need for either party to hold Request tokens or have any development knowledge. Request Network is Chain and Currency agnostic and is primed for real world (non-crypto) implementation.

Long Answer: There is a strong focus and vision from the Request networks on making it easier to pay in cryptocurrencies, not only fiat, anywhere. For example B2B, online transactions and even Point of Sale. In line with that we have confirmation that the network is chain agnostic and currency agnostic. This is to say that the Request Network can interact with other chains through the use of oracles, essentially not restricting payments or requests to be only in the form of ETH, expanding further to other chains and fiat as well.

This allows request network to be currency agnostic, allowing API developers or requestors to make a request outside the Ethereum chain. In essence anyone interacting with the Request network never need hold the REQ token, allowing a far greater audience to partake in the network. This makes it infinitely easier to implement worldwide in a non-crypto environment.

This does not make the Request token obsolete though, read above explanation on token burn for transactions. See below an example illustrating the use of Gateways to make the Request Network Chain agnostic and Currency Agnostic.

Adam is a developer – Adam sets up a Payment Gateway using the API on the Request Network. Adam holds a reserve of Request tokens which are used for the REQ fee for using the network. Adam also overlays a 5% fee on top of the set network fee for the use of his Gateway.

Supplier, David, uses the payment Gateway to make a Request. The Supplier outlines in which form of currency he wishes for the payment. David has requested that he be paid in Fiat.

The Request is relayed to the Customer, Sarah. Customer is able to use a number of methods to make payment and in a number of different currencies (fiat or chains like ETH, BTC etc). Sarah decides to make the payment in BTC.

Once Sarah has made the payment, it goes through the Gateway. This is when the conversions takes place, BTC to Fiat in this example to pay the Supplier David. There are various ways in which the conversion could happen such as the usage of Oracles, a 0x based relayer such as the “The 0cean” could be used and more.

NOTE: All transactions made on other chains (in this example the BTC chain) on behalf of the Request Network are confirmed and verified via the use of Oracles.

Can you stake on the Request Network?

Short answer: Not yet. It is all dependent on the development of technology on the Ethereum Network, Plasma and Sharding in particular. Developers are open to staking and this coupled with burning tokens makes Request Network a must hold investment.

Long answer: The developers’ comments are that they are keeping their options open, so essentially, we don’t know yet. The developers have set up a burning mechanism to help scale the project. As tokens are burned for every transaction over time the value of the token is increased.

It should be noted though that the Request Network is open to the concept of staking and would readily implement depending on the new technologies being introduced to the Ethereum network, for further reading look into Plasma and Sharding on the Ethereum Network.

How this will all play out is still vague until further developments on the Ethereum network are made. There could even be the possibility that Request will fork from the Ethereum network and use staking to secure the network. With the burning mechanism (Gateways) and staking (PoS) working hand in hand Request could cater to both developers who create Gateways and lay investors who want to create a form of passive income for holding tokens.

How does the reputation system for transactions work? How can you know a requester is trustworthy in a decentralized market?

The yellow paper by the Request Network outlines a Payer and Payee ID. These IDs are a customer’s and supplier’s reputation. The network will comprehensively evaluate each ID based on how they interacted, on time payments, late payments, refunds, cancellations and so on. Though there may be no rating system with stars or comments about how a product was damaged or the customer not paying, the recording of all interactions with an ID would be more than sufficient, if not even better than bias reviews.

What are the other functions of Request Network other than a payment system?

Assistance in accounting and automating accounting. An example of streamlining payments was also given in the white paper, where paying on the network can calculate the tax and sends directly to the tax office.

Essentially by utilising the request network companies can leverage the ledger as a form of accounting. Creating their own models from APIs that work with the ledger to automate their accounting process. In theory if all the company’s transactions from their customers is from the Request Network it would be an open ledger for public access. This may sound like something a company may never want to do, but imagine if this was the Gold standard for transparency by companies. The blockchain is immutable allowing trust in companies to be easily fostered. In the future the public may demand all companies act accordingly.

5Nov: Community Growth

In the days and weeks leading up to the Bitcoin 2x fork (expected ~16Nov), it remains difficult to value tokens up to and through arguably the biggest risk event crypto has seen. However one helpful metric to look at is community growth – which tends to have longer term correlation to adoption and subsequently price appreciation. Here we compare RequestNetwork with some recent ICOs.

Social Channel Comparison

Token Sale Date

Days Since Token Sale

Reddit Subs Today

FB Followers

Twitter

Request

13Oct17

23

1,768

712

5,125

OMG

27Jun17

131

18,136

5,860

83,600

Kyber

15Sep17

51

2,861

325

23,000

Chainlink

19Sep17

47

3,641

5,171

Airswap

10Oct17

26

535

2,072

5,347

Reddit ComparisonReddit often coalesces as the nerve center for community discussion; here we look at how the respective Reddit communities grew over time relative to their token sale date. Request looks to have a very healthy growth rate.

We would note a few things to qualify the reddit subscriber/community growth data.

The numbers are distorted by time of launch. The communities that were born earlier had a smaller pool of general crypto enthusiasts to attract (for example when OMG saw its genesis the /r/cryptocurrency sub had just ~64k subs vs. 162k today). Though the numbers in the table/chart are unadjusted we have pulled the rough numbers for those of you interested in qualifying the data. Approx /r/cryptocurrency subscribers at:
Request Token Sale: 143k
Airswap Token Sale: 142k
Chainlink Token Sale: 128k
Kyber Token Sale: 125k
OmiseGo Token Sale: 64k

The amount of subscribers to a community tends to be skewed by price action. When a coin “moons” and trades multiple times its ICO price this typically generates a lot of hype and attention, drawing new investors and interest to a community. So in reality community growth can be led by rapid price appreciation as opposed to the other way around. We can see that up until about day 10, Request actually outperforms other communities. While it continues to exhibit very healthy growth post the 10 day mark it is unable to match the parabolic growth of Chainlink and Kyber which begin to benefit from rapid price appreciation.

Context is everything. Request launched at a difficult time for crypto (Forks, Fud and more). Given the volatility and price action (not to meniton DoubleReqGate) surrounding its launch, the community growth itself looks quite healthy. Kyber and Link both launched at the peak of ICO fever and with a comfortable gap to the Bitcoin fork drama; so while their community growth is spectacular we should keep in mind the broader macro context and its impact on early price and community growth. Conversely OmiseGO which is arguably the best performer of the 5 mentioned here, underperforms all bar AirSwap when we look at the first 20 days of community growth (yes, even once adjusted for the size of the broader crypto space). This underscores the fact that community growth data needs to be contextualised to be useful.

Reddit Subs Relative to Token Sale Date

-5 days

0

5 days

10 days

15 days

20 days

Request

476

595

903

1367

1628

1746

OMG

207

247

255

304

311

517

Kyber

679

834

1007

1778

2205

2428

Chainlink

245

681

1518

2128

Airswap

139

265

313

469

509

529

31Oct: Reflecting on the Double REQ Fiasco

REQ was listed on Binance.com on the 27th of October and while many had anticipated that adoption by a higher volume exchange would be price positive the ensuing calamity has had mixed results.

What went wrong?
An error with Binance resulted in REQ holders being credited 2 times the REQ tokens they deposited into their Binance account (keep in mind that when you trade on a centralised exchange, what you are trading is merely a representation of the actual tokens on the blockchain. the fact that Binance credited people double their REQ did not and could not generate new REQ tokens). Some of these depositors dumped what they believed to be “free tokens” on the exchange in a quick attempt to “double” their money, some were even able to withdraw their proceeds before Binance froze withdrawals.

How did it play out?
Investors became frantic and we saw a mix of behaviours
A) those trying to take advantage of their doubled REQ balance by selling at market (the low traded according to Binance was 0.00010011ETH).
B) those frightened by the “fire-sale” who sold their REQ to try and recoup some of their investment as they feared REQ was going much lower.
C) those who saw this as a great opportunity to load up on cheap REQ and bought on market.
D) those who sat silently on the sidelines either to see out the storm or because they didn’t have funds available.

What was the response from Binance?
Soon after realising their error; Binance froze withdrawals so as to mitigate the losses arising from the situation. Reports on social channels (please keep in mind that we are just aggregating whispers, the below is not verified) indicate that:
A) Binance reversed double deposits so that each user only had a balance equivalent to the tokens they originally deposited.
B) Binance clawed back ETH or BTC proceeds from users who sold REQ tokens that were not theirs. They were allowed to keep proceeds from REQ sold which they actually owned.
C) Binance sent emails to users who had sold doubled REQ and subsequently managed to withdraw proceeds before the freeze. The emails are alleged to have requested return of wrongly gained funds.
D) Binance allowed all users who had received the erroneous double deposit to retain an equivalent value of the duplicate deposit as credit against future trading fee on Binance.

The Winners:
A) Those who managed to buy REQ at the lows during the “fire sale”.
B) Those who managed to sell their doubled REQ tokens and withdraw proceeds before Binance caught on. (though the moral debate about whether this behaviour is right or wrong continues).

The Losers:
A) Those who sought to sell their doubled REQ either to turn a quick profit or in a state of panic but were unable to withdraw in time. Most of these people have had any proceeds from sale of REQ they didn’t own clawed back; AND much worse they have now sold their REAL REQ at below the price they normally would have; their only consolation is the credit against future trading fees on Binance.
B) Binance themselves have taken an inevitable knock to their reputation. Furthermore depending on how many traders managed to withdraw ETH or BTC proceeds from sale of REQ that didn’t actually exist; Binance would be left needing to make whole the traders who bought the cheap REQ. Since this REQ didn’t actually exist Binance will need to (they may already have done so) buy REQ in the open market which may cause some short term price appreciation.

The Takeaways:Many feel that any boost to REQ prices from having a new exchange listing was largely offset (or worse) by the impact of the doubling fiasco. Anticipation that Binance buying REQ on the open market may cause price appreciation has turned out to be largely unsubstantiated as REQ token prices continue to fluctuate. We now have two new types of participants involved in the space – those who bought REQ at remarkably low prices and those who sold REQ at remarkably low prices; it will be interesting to see how this impacts supply demand fundamentals going forward.

27Oct: Request Network Project Update

Check out the official Blog post here. Here’s what we found out; overall a sane response from the team to the early FUD and a demonstration of their commitment to do the work and let the projects merits lead price appreciation.

Ahead of Roadmap: The team is ahead of their roadmap and moved forward “website to interact with Requests” from Q1 2018 to Q4 2017.

Approach to Scaling: 2-fold strategy
-Request Team Growth: Find the best people to build out a strong team.
-Cultivate Innovation on Request Protocol: Create a platform to fund innovative projects based on Request.

Continuous Invoices: A continuous invoice is an invoice which is neither paid at once nor through a down payment but in a continuous flow. More info on this soon.

26Oct: Announcement/Exchange Speculation

The request team has committed to a first project update on Friday the 27th and subsequent updates every two weeks thereafter. We do not anticipate any major partnership announcements or price-moving releases; however it can’t be ruled out as Request looks to move attention away from the recent FUD.

Exchange SpeculationAs we noted previously listing on an exchange is usually correlated with price appreciation (broader exposure; and regarded to some extent as acceptance of the tech/project); the more popular the exchange the more dramatic the market reaction. Request social channels are rife with speculation of an impending exchange listing; not without good cause. The team has stated that they have been in communication with exchanges for some time now; with Chris (co-founder) seeking community feedback as early as the 5th of October.

Subsequently on October 20. We received official confirmation of contact with multiple top-tier exchanges with a qualification that no further comment was possible for legal reasons.

One user “anonymoose” even posted a picture of a conversation that seems to indicate that a resolution has been reached regarding the 100k fee mentioned on October 5. Though note that this is just a screenshot of a private thread and we have not sighted the comments in the official slack, just the screenshot.

It is unclear what exchange announcements will be made and when; though it is becoming clear to observors that the speculation of imminent listing is offering near-term support to the price. Any formal announcements with top-tier exchanges will likely be met with a jump in REQ price and will be celebrated by REQ holders.

25Oct: Post ICO Price Action

Since Request tokens became transferable the price has experienced a drift lower.

Given the context of the bitcoin forks, growing disillusionment with the “ICO bubble” and the expected supply pressure from pre-sale purchasers (who received a 20% discount) the price action was not altogether surprising but with so much expectation from pre-ICO hype (we recall echoes of 5x and 10x within a week being proclaimed freely), Request social channels were filled with FUD (Fear, uncertainty, doubt) which compounded early softness in REQ prices. However we do seem to have found a floor for the time being.

Two Most Common Sources of Fud (take these with a healthy pinch of salt; these are the views of only a subset of investors)

Pre Sale Investor Hate: With early offers below the ICO price of 0.0002; ICO participants dislike for the pre-sale investor discount consolidated quickly as it was widely assumed that they were the ones selling to turn a quick profit. Some investors seemed surprised to discover there was a pre-sale or even a pre-sale discount despite the fact that this was made clear to anyone who did their due diligence. We will abstain from taking a firm view on the behavior of pre-sale investors until we do (or see) some in depth analysis of the ether-trail.

Lack of Communication from Devs: With the price tanking and the Request team taking the view early on that it was not their job to comment on early trading/speculation; aggrieved investors took to some remarkable conspiracy theories. There were calls to “sue the founders”, scam allegations, calls for SEC investigations just to name a few.

Any investment comes with inherent risk; crypto investment perhaps more so given the nascent nature of the technology and space. It seems that most of the grievances stem from an inability of ICO investors to realize profits as quickly or dramatically as they had expected; as opposed to any failing on the part of the team (though perhaps their failure to over-communicate could be seen as a failing). The price deterioration and lack of comforting rhetoric from the development team created a negative feedback loop.

Response from Request Team

In an effort to cut off the negative feedback loop; the Request team released a statement on October 25; which when combined with fresh speculation as to exchange listings had an almost immediate impact on sentiment and price action; with REQ prices clawing higher in the 24 hours since the statement.

Exchange Listings

This section was originally posted on the 19th of October, but will be updated to include new listings as we go.

21 Oct:

Liqui:Liqui is usually one of the first to list new tokens/coins. Is a magnitude larger than the exchanges that listed REQ pre token transferrability (daily volumes can exceed $20million across pairs), however it is still seen as a relatively small exchange.

We can see that at the time of this update (24th October) liqui is beginning to overtake Etherdelta in total Req volumes traded.

19 Oct

Req tokens become transferrable and trading commences ~7AM UTC on 20th October 2017 (according to the official slack). So far there are 4 exchanges that have listed Request for trading when tokens become transferable. If you are not extremely familiar with an exchange/trading protocol it is advisable to proceed with extreme caution; people have been known to mis-trade on platforms like Etherdelta without understanding how it works and have lost significant amounts of money. Do your research and understand what you are doing before you proceed. We would anticipate volumes to pick-up more significantly when one of the larger exchanges picks REQ up (Bittrex, Binance, Poloniex etc.). Will keep updating here.

Etherdelta:Total volume today is ~$3.8million. Etherdelta is usually the very first to list new coins. the order book for REQ already visible. However liquidity can be an issue and the user interface can be tricky.

Gate.io: Total volume today is ~$2.9million. Is the rebranded version of Bter.

Radar Relay: Radar is a 0x protocol based relay that allows you to find and trade any ERC20 token.

Idex: From their post on the Request subreddit “IDEX is a new decentralized Ethereum exchange that supports real-time trades with high transaction throughput. We’re as secure as EtherDelta while providing a trading experience just like centralized exchanges. Now you can trade in real-time on a smart contract exchange without having to waste gas on “Bad jump destinations.” You can get up and going in seconds.”

16Oct: Hype Roundup

The ICO has officially closed. We are now seeing the inevitable shift in the attitude of early investors as they move from foes->friends. With competition for tokens a thing of the past; the name of the game now is cooperation as investors seek ever higher valuations for their REQ tokens. In the crypto world promotion and marketing have become decentralized as disparate token-holders are incentivised to convince non-holders (the broader market) that their tokens are ever-more valuable.

What are the main points for REQ which are generating hype? (The below is not an endorsement of or confirmation of anything; just a round-up of the hype surrounding the project; look at it through the lens of your critical ability)

YCombinator Partnership: The partnership with arguably the worlds most renowned startup incubator cannot be ignored. YC has accelerated the likes of Airnbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Reddit and Coinbase. With the support of YC, many believe that the connections and expertise this will bring will help Request to go the distance. There’s already a copypasta meme that’s been spawned from the YC/Request hype.

“YC business tactics are EXTREMELY aggressive. YC doesnt fuck around with their startups. They will push Request down the throats of the normies in Silicon Valley and they will use it like addicts. They made Airbnb, Dropbox, Twitch etc mainstream and they will make Request into Venmo/PayPal 2.0” – Anonymous

Coinbase Connection: Coinbase will be well known to all in the crypto space as one of the most mainstream platforms for retail access to crypto. As coins are adopted on increasingly popular exchanges their value tends to grow (Bittrex; Poloniex; Binance are usually the first of the more liquid/renowned exchanges to list altcoins). Listing on a big exchange is usually met with an immediate spike in the price of a coin as the market tends to read listing as wider acceptance of a given technology. If REQ were able to leverage its YC connections to land a listing on coinbase (which was also accellerated by YC); this would be a real hail-mary and launch REQ into a truly rarified space within crypto.

ING Partnership: ING Needs no introduction, it is one of the wolds largest banking and financial services providers. A partnership with the likes of ING means access to greater resources and networks. As for the Request hype engine; the connection with ING will be remarkably bullish for REQ price; the crypto space has fallen in love with marriages between new-tech and old world institutions. Each announcement of adoption by an established company is seen as an endorsement of the project. ING group boasts a market cap of 60.3 billion Euro and employs more than 52,000 people. Backing by a giant of the finance world is not to be easily dismissed.

OMG of the West: As previously mentioned OmiseGO has been the darling of the cryptoverse for the past few months; it is one of Request’s key competitors in the broad crypto-payments space. The Request team even Blogged comparing the two. The forums and chats are alive with price speculation and arguments abound between proponents and detractors of the Request project as to REQs ability to replicate OMGs success. (OmiseGO’s ICO price was $0.24 on 15 July; it trades 16Oct at $7.84). OmiseGo was born out of Omise (Company based in Thailand) and to begin with at least was focused on South East Asia. One line of thinking is that with backing from Ycombinator and ING; Request is better positioned to network with and capture partnerships with western companies and eventually that it will be better positioned to capture the western retail market.

Moontalk: There is no substantial or realistic way to gauge what the price of REQ will be when tokens become transferable on the 20th of October; however price speculations of 2x, 4x, 10x, and 20x ICO price can be heard whispered in the speculative hallways of the cryptosphere. Looking at EtherDelta (usually the very first to list any ERC20 token) we can see bids for REQ tokens already far in excess of the ICO price (keep in mind though that the volumes on EtherDelta are tiny and many believe these early bids are false signals by REQ holders to over-inflate and hype up the price). The highest bid is at a whopping $2.72 based on current ether price; and looks like a clear false flag. We also see a bid for 6ether worth of REQ at 0.001eth ( 5x ICO price; or ~34c/Req). Difficult to anticipate where REQ launches but those in the ICO space will watch early price action with interest.

Community Growth: Just updating the community size stats from our pre-ico guide

15Oct: Day3 – ICO Sold Out

We predicted that day1 of the Request.network ICO would sell out ~70% of the supply; the outcome was just shy of that number with ~66.3% sold in the first window. The structure of the ICO with its 1) restricted whitelist 2) KYC requirements and 3) low cap per user; has resulted in a slow burn to the finish line as no whales (large investors) have been able to come in and express their full size. A few hours from the close of the day3 window REQ sold out.

Looking at Etherscan.io we can see that there are a total of 11,515 token holders post-ico; which means that ~77.3% of eligible candidates contributed. Below is the distribution of the top 50 token holders. To rank in the top 50 you would need to hold at least 508,565REQ (which would have cost you 101.713ether). Click here to see expanded stats.

How Fast Will Request Sell OutThough it is difficult to predict we can lean on a recent example. The below is speculation leaning on a recent ICO with similar structure, and as such should be taken with a grain of salt. Wanchain went for a similar approach with the first day of its token sale. We compare the first 2 days of both ICO Structures below (Rough stats only):

ICO

Wanchain

Request

Day 1 Participants

7,779

14,895

Day 1 Contribution Amount Permitted

6.8 Ether

6.713 Ether

Day 1 Supply Available

52,897.2 Ether Equivalent of WAN

100,000 Ether Equivalent of REQ

Sold

~70%

X

Day 2 Participants

11,003

14,895

Day 2 Contribution Amount Permitted

Additional 65 Ether per Investor

Additional 6.713 Ether per Investor

Day 2 Contribution Amount Available

Residual Day 1 Supply + 20,000Ether (~36,000 Ether Equivalent of WAN)

Residual Day 1 Supply

Sold

100% <10mins

X

How fast did Wanchain Sell Out?
Wanchain sold ~70% of its day1 Supply (each investor contributed an average of ~4.76 ether). Wanchain permitted 65 ether contributions (per transaction) on day2 and sold out within minutes as investors raced to contribute. So the comparison between these two ICOs is only useful for the day1 period as there are too many differences in their approach to day2.

What could Request ICO look like on day1?
If we ignore the fact that these are completely different projects for a second and assume that the “average contributor” in the Request ICO will utilize 4.7ether or ~70% of their allotment (as we saw with Wanchain) then we will see ~70k Ether worth of REQ sold on day1.

What could Request ICO look like on day2?
If we assume that the average day2 contributor will buy

A) The Max permitted of 6.713 additional ether of REQ: 4,468 contributors (30% of all possible participants) will succeed in contributing.
B) 4.7 ether (the same as predicted day1 average): 6,382 contributors (42.8% of all possible participants) will succeed.

What are the Key takeaways from our hypothetical prediction?

Assuming day1 sells 70% or less of the available tokens (this is not known yet!)… we can imagine that REQ won’t see as much of a mad-dash finish on day2 as we did with Wanchain (which permitted each user to purchase almost 10x more on day2 than Request is allowing). It will be interesting to see how quickly and if Request sells out on day2. If it doesn’t sell out by day2 close, all investors will be permitted to contribute up to an additional 13.426 ETH on day3.

ICO fever is navigating turbulent waters with the specter of regulation looming large across China, Korea, and Singapore in recent days. Investors are never-the-less clamoring for the next big thing and “Request” emerges as one of the winners in October. The hype and anticipation for the ICO is at the higher end of the spectrum with the team needing to initiate a wait-list process for whitelisting applications to their ICO after their slack channel raced to >21k subs in less than three weeks (blog post here).

The nearest competitor to Request is OmiseGO (Request Blog compared the two; linked above) which those in the space will know has been the darling of the cryptoverse over the past two months. With backing from Vitalik Buterin himself and a string of announcements from Omise (the parent company) teasing the valuation to an all time high that easily cleared 1billion USD. (Omise ICO price was $0.24 on 15 July; it trades today at $8.3). If investors believe request has half ..even a quarter of the growth potential that OMG demonstrated we are set for some dramatic price action.

Pulse Check on Hype

It is my humble opinion that Request is one of the more hyped ICOs in the month of October; receiving widespread attention after their whitelist was closed 5 days before the original deadline in observation of overwhelming interest. Whitelisted email addresses have been sold in the murky secondary market (not conducted by request.network) for in excess of $100USD each, which speaks to the urgency with which investors are seeking out ICO stage exposure to their favorite new tokens.

Token Sale Details From Request Blog
The total supply will be split evenly between the successful KYC applicants (just over 15,000). This means that each participant will be able to purchase ~6.25 eth equivalent of REQ. Any unpurchased REQ will be rolled over to day2 of the ICO where each participant can purchase up to double their day1 limit (so each investor can buy up to an additional ~12.5 ETHequivalent of REQ). Given the structure of the ICO, the low first day cap and the hype for this ICO it is reasonable to assume we will be sold out at some point in the day2 window .

It is reasonable to believe that given the early close of the whitelist for Request and the low cap per investor there will be unmet demand following the ICO and plenty of pent up FOMO.

t+ 1~2weeks – Token Distribution and Exchanges

In the immediate aftermath of the token distribution we will see early investors shift from foes to friends, as the competition to accrue REQ tokens transitions to a collective desire to see REQ appreciate in value. Speculation of price action in the chats/forums will be littered with talk of moons and mars, multiples of 2x, 4x, 10x, and 100x will be thrown about casually and without real analysis.

The key talking points that accelerate the price appreciation of REQ will be:
-The fact that the team behind Request has received successive rounds of capital for its project Moneytis between 2015 and 2017
-Request is one of if not the first Ycombinator incubated projects to ICO. Ycombinator will be well known to many in the tech space and has been described as “the world’s most powerful start-up incubator”. Ycombinator has spawned the likes of AirBNB and Dropbox (more about that here).

They main concerns and price suppressants:
-Lack of working product
-Pre-sale participants who received a 20% discount may take profit earlier than ICO investors
-Long road-map with reliance on tech that is as yet unproven may inhibit full realisation of value; investors may deem the project too ambitious.
-Coins will hit exchanges mid to late october, just ahead of the inevitable fud that will ensue from the bitcoin 2x hardfork. REQ will not be immune to any systemic crypto sell-offs.

Exchange Listing

There has been no formal confirmation of REQ being listed on any exchange. The Request team has actively sought feedback from the community about the type of exchanges to negotiate with and the amount of money that should be spent on exchange listing. This indicates at least that there are discussions or plans underway. The token will appear on ether delta pretty much immediately after they become transferable (7 days after ICO).

MarketCap of The Competition:

These aren’t like comparisons – this is just for a feel of the growth potential in the broad space of Crypto Payment Systems

Participate; stay nimble. Request has a lot going for it; a low market-cap with an equitable ICO structure that is bound to leave pent-up demand is sure to result in bullish near-term price action. The fact that is incubated by Ycombinator provides a unique selling point that will set it apart from competitors and will help sustain the price after the initial demand wanes. With the likes of linkchain and kyber earning early participants handsome profits recently, their will be a rush for REQ tokens if it becomes earmarked as the next ICO winner. The inevitable comparisons to OmiseGO will be a double-edged sword; no-one in the space will want to “miss the rocket” if they believe it can perform in a similar fashion to OMG, on the other hand OMG supporters will be determined to decry request as not having the same backing (Vitalik, Omise).

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